EVENT DESCRIPTION

Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof premiered in New York on this date in 1955. The play, which tells the story of a rich Southern family and their struggles to control the family fortune and their own inner conflicts, went on to earn a Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Williams.

CLASSROOM ACTIVITY

To prepare students to read the works of Tennessee Williams or other playwrights, first introduce them to the characteristics of drama. Reader's Theater provides a great way to demonstrate the difference between expository and dramatic structure. Divide students into groups and provide each group with a chapter from a novel the class has read. Ask them to create a script from the chapter that could be used to present this chapter's events to the class. Aaron Shepard's Website on Reader's Theater offers a variety of resources to help you guide students in this activity. Once the groups have produced their scripts, they can present their scenes to the rest of the class.

RELATED RESOURCES

This lesson plan invites students to consider characters from Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin in the Sun. Students explore a selected character and write poems about objects associated with that character.